Zaid Shakir

The 500 Most Influential Muslims of the world edition 2020 describes Imam Zaid Shakir as "an influential Islamic scholar and a voice of conscience for American Muslims and non-Muslims alike.", edited by John Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin

As reported in The New York Times, Zaid Shakir appeared with nine other influential Muslim scholars in a YouTube video denouncing militant Islam. The aftermath of 911 Shakir states, "People all over the world have felt the repercussions and the reprisals for the senseless brutality of 9/11’s perpetrators. Our best hope is to attempt to move beyond the pain, strife and hatred unleashed. Trusting in the power and promise of God we will be able to do just that."

Imam Zaid was named in CNN's 2018 list of "25 Influential American Muslims", where he was described as "one of the West’s most respected Muslim scholars.”

He is co-founder and chairman of United For Change, whose stated goal is to leverage the diversity of the Muslim and interfaith community and address divisive obstacles. In 2015, he signed the official Memorandum of Understanding between Zaytuna College and Hartford Seminary in Connecticut.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has praised him, stating, "Embodying an American story if ever there was one—including proverbial bootstraps, military service, political activism, and deep religious commitment—Zaid Shakir’s message of social justice in the face of poverty and racism he has known first hand makes him endlessly and, it often seems, effortlessly relevant. He is as approachable a man as I’ve ever met."

In 2003, as a scholar-in-residence at Zaytuna Institute located in California, Shakir began to teach Arabic, Law, and Islamic spirituality. In 2004, he initiated a pilot seminary program at Zaytuna Institute, which was useful in Zaytuna College’s refinement of its Islamic Studies curriculum and its educational philosophy. For four years, students in the pilot program were engaged in the study of contemporary and classical texts. And, in the fall of 2010, he and his colleagues Hamza Yusuf, and Hatem Bazian co-founded the Berkeley, California based Zaytuna College, a four-year Muslim liberal arts college, the first of its kind in the United States, dedicated to "educate and prepare morally committed professional, intellectual, and spiritual leaders", who are grounded in the Islamic scholarly tradition and conversant with the cultural currents and critical ideas shaping modern society. In 2016, Zaytuna College became the first accredited Muslim campus in the United States after it received approval from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

A summa cum laude graduate, he obtained a BA in International Relations at American University in Washington, D.C., earned his MA in Political Science at Rutgers University. He then left for Syria to pursue his studies in the traditional Islamic Sciences. For seven years in Syria, and briefly in Morocco, he immersed himself in an intense study of Arabic, Islamic law, Quranic studies, and spirituality with some of the top Islamic scholars of our age, such as Sheikh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Shāghūrī and Sheikh Mustafa Al-Turkmani. In 2001, he was the first American male graduate from Syria's Abu Nour University with a BA in Islamic Sciences.

Imam Zaid Shakir (Arabic: زيد شاكر ‎; born Ricky Daryl Mitchell, May 24, 1956) is a Muslim American scholar and co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California. He teaches courses on Arabic, law, history, and Islamic spirituality.

Shakir was born in 1956 in Berkeley, California as Ricky Daryl Mitchell to a family descended from African, Irish and Native American roots. His formative years were spent in housing projects in New Britain Connecticut. These early experiences instilled in him a compassionate and realistic work ethic, as well as, an unshakeable desire for social change and economic justice. He converted to Islam in 1977 while serving in the United States Air Force and shortly after changed his name to Zaid Salim Shakir.